2024-02-22 18:24:03
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 12 minutes ago, Updated now
A Bordeaux wine grower takes a merchant to court for violating the Egalim law. kilimanjaro / stock.adobe.com
This is the first time that a court has convicted buyers for violating the Egalim law on agricultural prices.
The decision is «inédite». While the Egalim law is at the heart of the agricultural crisis, justice on Thursday sentenced traders to pay 350,000 euros to a Bordeaux wine grower who accused them of having violated the Egalim law on agricultural prices in buying his wine in bulk at a price “excessively low”.
“This is the first time that a court has condemned buyers of agricultural products for charging abusively low purchase prices.”, says the applicant’s lawyer, Me Louis Lacamp. Rémi Lacombe, an operator in Médoc, had sold nearly 8,500 hectoliters to the companies Cordier and Maison Ginestet in 2021 and 2022, at prices of 1,150 or 1,200 euros per barrel (900 liters), depending on the vintage. Or around one euro per bottle, a price that the producer judges to be much lower than its production costs, oscillating according to him between 1500 and 2000 euros per barrel.
The Bordeaux commercial court, where the case was heard on January 11, found in its decision that the two traders had not let Rémi Lacombe make price proposals on contracts, “which was to constitute the basis of the pre-contractual negotiation”.
Also read Egalim Law: “All major supermarket chains controlled in the coming days”, announces Le Maire
Farmers fear possible reprisals
The winegrower demanded between 715,000 and 512,000 euros from the defendants in order to “repair the damage causedâ€, on the basis of article L442-7 of the Commercial Code as amended by the Egalim law. Adopted at the end of 2018, it must provide farmers with an income that allows them to live from their work. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced his desire to present a new law by the summer for “strengthen the Egalim system”.
After various calculations and estimating that the fair purchase price per barrel was 1,550 euros, the court ordered the Cordier company to pay it 202,000 euros and Maison Ginestet 152,000 euros. “This decision is important because it tells farmers that acting against buyers who charge abusively low prices, yes, it can achieve a result.”, says the winegrower’s lawyer. He sees a “decision transposable to all agricultural products”even if he concedes that undertaking such a step “is not easy because farmers are afraid of possible reprisals from traders, afraid that no one will buy their produce from them anymore.”. Lawyers for the traders did not immediately give answers.
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